Joanni was tense, as was everyone else on the bridge of the River Boat. The Boss had taken the Trident, a couple of samples of TNI's new 'Foam and a flight crew to meet with the Horned Dog's representatives over 25 minutes ago. He was now 5 minutes late. Compounding the TNI crew's worry was that the transponder on the Trident had stopped broadcasting 16 minutes ago. Given that they were on the plain of fire any number of things could have happened but coupled with them being late for their rendevous could mean big trouble.

Joanni was staring at the comm station, trying to will it to come to life when Twain's emergency beacon signal set off several alarms across the ship's bridge. Before Joanni could get a triangulation on it's signal Twain's emergency override codes came across the comm stations control monitor and activated the main viewer on the bridge. The sight that the crew beheld stopped everyone cold which was no easy feat. The entire ship's crew was comprised of former members of the BFF, EEF and other factions from the Border Wars. These men and women had faced death, torture and worse numerous times but what they were seeing made each and every one of them shiver.

The video was obviously from the Boss's armor's video capture system and it showed something that looked like a scene from a post apoctolyptic survival vid. Twain was on a small basalt island in the middle of a sea of lava. On one side of the island the wreck of a destroyed Trident smoked silently while 5 K'ias Sanguine Lords floated around as if searching for something. Twain's sub-vocalized message was being drowned out by one of the Sanguine Lords yelling something about being brought to Su Maehl for questioning and proving his innocense. If the situation wasn't so dire Joanni would have laughed until she cried.

"Gaia" Joanni said loaking at the AI's station on the bridge, "please filter out that monster's prattling and clean up Twain's audio, we need to know what the Boss is saying."

"I will display Twain's feed as text at the bottom of the viewer Joanni."

Immediately a text stream of Twain's audio feed started to scroll across the bottom of the viewer. 'Thank goodness for Gaia' Joanni thought. If not for the AI's interpretation Twain's speech could sometimes be incomprehensible for the uninitiated.

"... I repeat, the Trident has been destroyed, the crew killed as well as our some of our contacts. These are Sanguine Lords under the command of a Kasanthian named Ryuk. They seem to think that I was either involved in or the initiator of an attack on Su Maehl. They've stated twice now that my only choices are to voluntarily go with them so that Su Maehl can personally question me or to be killed and then taken to Layne Yr for torture. I'm disinclined to take either choice. At this point my armor's systems are functioning 100% and the Sanguine Lords have not been able to draw a bead on me. However if this changes I will fight back with everything that I have and will put myself in the lava before I let them take me. Hopefully it won't come to that. I have a plan and would like you all to call in some backup. Get Prelate Yes'reen my coordinates and give his people this feed. Give Jeremiah Strykker a call and let him know that while I don't expect him to come to Kryptos to rescue me, it would be nice and that I do hope that if I am captured that he rescue me before Maehl or the TRILAT get too far inside my head. Also give Blackheart a call, I'm sure that he has people on Kryptos and maybe they can assist. Make sure that everyone knows about the 'Foam and to be careful of the island. I want the River Boat to be ready to exit Kryptos immediately. Don't worry folks, I have a plan and we just might get some useful research in today!"

Last edited by TerraNovaIndustries on Wed Jun 15, 2011 5:07 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : Misspelled "Encrypted")